Chapter 9 Riverton
Unit 114. A padlock, a key from her coat pocket, and inside , a single folding chair, a camping lantern, and on the floor beside a duffel bag, the music box.
“That’s it,” Marcus said.
“That’s it.”
He crouched in front of it. The lid was open, the USB drive still inside , whoever she’d sent hadn’t taken it, just moved it. The ledger page he’d memorized was folded beside it. He picked the drive up and held it in his palm, the same way he’d held his father’s brass key two nights ago.
“What are you asking me to do?” he said without looking up.
“I’m asking you to think before you hand it to Whitfield.” Gloria sat down on the folding chair. “I’m asking you to understand that Darius doesn’t know you exist, doesn’t know what his mother’s real name was, and is twenty-four years old and has made terrible decisions that he hasn’t been able to get out of. I’m asking you to consider whether destroying Rafael is worth destroying him too.”
“Rafael killed my father,” Marcus said.
“I know.”
“He killed my father,” Marcus said again, slower, “to protect a secret that Darius is also part of. And you’re asking me to consider whether Rafael’s exposure is worth Darius’s.”
“I’m asking you to consider whether Rafael’s prosecution requires Darius’s destruction. Those might not be the same thing.”
“Mom,” Marcus said , and the word came out before he’d decided to say it, rough-edged, slightly too quiet, and she went very still when she heard it. “My father is dead. I have been running for two days. Jake Torres , the closest thing I’ve had to a brother for three years , turns out to be a federal asset assigned to watch me. And now you’re telling me I have an actual brother, twenty-four years old, and the first thing you’re asking me to do is protect him from the consequences of his own choices.”
“Yes,” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m asking.”
Marcus stood up. He set the USB drive on top of the music box, straightened, and looked at his mother , really looked, the way he hadn’t allowed himself to in the rail yard, the way he’d been avoiding since she stepped out of the car.
She looked tired. Not tired the way people looked after a long night , tired the way people looked after a long decade, after years of holding something heavy and refusing to put it down. He recognized that too.
“I need to know one thing,” he said.
“Anything.”
“Dad knew. About Darius. He knew and he still built the ledger with Darius’ name in it.”
Gloria looked at the floor. “Yes.”
“Which means he made a choice. He decided justice mattered more than protecting a boy he’d never met who happened to share his ex-wife’s blood.
“Your father’s choices are your father’s,” Gloria said carefully.
“You disagreed with them.”
“I disagreed with them.”
“And now he’s dead,” Marcus said. “And you’re here asking me to make a different choice. And I’m supposed to do that in a storage unit at , ” he checked his watch , “one in the morning, with Whitfield’s thirty minutes ticking and Rafael’s people somewhere in the city looking for me.”
“I know the timing is, ”
“I’m not saying no,” Marcus said.
She looked up.
“I’m saying I need forty-eight hours. I need to get eyes on Darius myself , I need to understand who he is, what he knows, what he’s willing to do. Because you are not a neutral party on this question, and your read of who Darius is and what he deserves is not something I can accept without seeing it myself. If there’s a version where Rafael goes down and Darius gets a path out, I want to see if that version is real. But I am not handing this drive to Whitfield tonight either, so we need to figure out how you explain the next forty-eight hours to your DEA handlers.”
Gloria stared at him for a long moment. Then, for the first time since she’d stepped out of the car, something in her expression shifted , not quite a smile, but its immediate neighbor.
“You sound like your father,” she said.
“Don’t,” he said quietly. “Not tonight.”
He picked up the music box, closed the lid, and tucked it under his arm. Then he stopped in the doorway of the unit, halfway between her and the dark outside.
“Where is Darius right now?”
Gloria pulled out her phone. Turned the screen toward him , a location pin, a West Side address, a building Marcus didn’t recognize.
“He doesn’t know you’re coming,” she said. “He doesn’t know you exist.”
“I know.” Marcus looked at the address long enough to memorize it. “Does he know he’s about to be the center of a federal case?”
“No.”
“Does he know someone killed your , ” Marcus stopped. Restarted. “Does he know someone killed my father because of what’s in this box?”
Gloria’s voice, when she answered, was very quiet. “He doesn’t know any of it, Marcus. He’s just a kid who made the wrong call at twenty-one and hasn’t been able to find the door out since.”
Marcus nodded once. Stepped into the dark outside the unit.
“Marcus.”
He stopped without turning around.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “For all of it. I know that’s not, I know it doesn’t, ”
“Get your story straight for Whitfield,” he said. “I’ll call you in forty-eight hours.”
He walked back toward the gate without looking back, the music box under his arm, the cold air off the lake hitting his face, and somewhere in the city behind him, Whitfield’s thirty-minute window had been up for eleven minutes and counting.
His phone , battery back in, switched on for the first time in forty minutes , buzzed the moment it found a signal.
Not Whitfield. Not Jake. Not his mother.
Rafael Moretti’s personal number , the one Marcus had never once, in four years of working for the family, been given directly.
One message. Five words.
‘We need to talk. Now.’
